By Will Sturgeon, 14 April 2004 16:05
NEWS An investigation into the accessibility of the internet has slammed the majority of websites for being unusable for disabled would-be web surfers.
Deaf, blind and dyslexic users are all being let down badly by the majority of website designers and online publishers, who fail to take into account their special needs, according to the report.
The bitterest irony is that the disabled, along with the elderly, have the most to gain from the internet and its virtual ability to bring products and services into the home.
The Disabled Rights Commission singled out websites such as online travel agents and banks as being particularly remiss because they have the potential to save disabled customers trips to the high street but are failing to do so.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Bert Massie, the chairman of the DRC, said: "Eight in 10 sites are next to impossible for some disabled people to use."
"That means no last-minute holidays, cheaper car insurance [nor] lower rates of interest on credit cards," he added.
However, some major websites have taken strides to include versions of their sites for visually impaired consumers. A spokeswoman for Amazon.com told silicon.com that its text-only site "is designed to work with text-only and text-to-speech browsers", which means partially-sighted and blind shoppers can still use the site. She added that it's been "very well received".
And Struan Robertson, an associate solicitor at law firm Masons, says many more companies are going to have to follow suit or risk legal action for discrimination under accessibility laws introduced in 1999 and clarified in 2002 that spell out the obligations that websites have to meet.
According to Robertson, the Royal National Institute for the Blind brought two such cases of discrimination last year - one against a FTSE 100 company - and in both cases the disputes were settled out of court with a condition of anonymity for the companies concerned.
Although the laws haven't been tested in the courts, Robertson said it is only a matter of time and when it happens other companies will sit up and take note.
"As soon as somebody does get sued, there will be a much higher level of awareness," he added, as companies will be scared into getting their own site into order, by fears of fines, compensation and "negative PR".
The Disabled Rights Commission recommends a number of measures that will make resolving the issue the shared responsibility of businesses, charities, developers, governments, schools, support networks and web designers and publishers.
Measures include encouraging training programmes to educate web designers on the need for accessibility and the ways in which the disabled can use the web.
The government is being urged to raise public and private sector awareness of the problems and the need to improve them while companies are being urged to include disabled people in the planning process and testing stage of websites.
The report also recommends that more should be done by support networks and charities to educate disabled end users about ways in which they can optimise their browsers and what technology they can use to improve their web surfing experience. Similarly companies producing operating systems, such as Microsoft, are being urged to make accessibility options even clearer and easier to find.
Full recommendations of the report can be read here.
Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. Jeffrey Risner
What I find unfair is not allowing blind people to be airplane pilots for British Airways. I find it very unfair. Then everyone who complains about unfair Internet access can fly on the new "No Sight, No Frills" flights. Guess what folks; life is unfair. Yes a mouse requires good hand eye coordination. If you don't have it then do something else and get over it.
2. Aden Brill
What a lot of whingers....
3. Robert Howe
If 80% of web sites are impossible for disabled users to navigate, that means that the remaining 20% are getting the sales from the 15% of the population who have some disability, including dyslexia. Only two UK retailers have the RNIB "See it Right" plaudit: good on them and shame on those responsible for the sites that are impossible to use.
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_seeitrightlogo.hcsp#P53_4178
4. Brian
I take the point, but just out of interest, how does being deaf stop you from using the vast majority of websites?
5. Richard Sheppard
Who is responsible for fixing this?
There are several views:
1. The Government should pay.
2. The Companies should pay.
3. The Disabled users should pay.
My view is that all three should be involved.
Government
The NHS has recently started the bulk purchase of digital hearing aids. This has greatly reduced their cost. In the same way, the bulk purchase of computer accessibility aids and training would make them much more affordable. The government is very ready to impose regulations and new duties on the rest of us. It would be nice if government web sites were to demonstrate best practice (or any practice) on accessibility. LearnDirect!!
Companies
The attitude of some companies and organizations is hard to understand. Some time ago my professional institution asked for comments on their new web site. In reply to my comments that parts were "inaccessible" or very slow to download across a dial-up link the web designer said that: "The Marketing Department had insisted on those elements for reasons of corporate branding."
Presumably, people in the Marketing Department had only viewed their web site with perfect eyesight, on large VDUs, across a high speed ethernet. They had completely forgotten the needs of the ordinary remote user.
Individuals
People with disabilities should expect to adapt their PCs and software. This will need training and instruction. I believe that the range of special needs and disabilities is too wide and the requirements too mutually exclusive for one solution to fit all needs. For example, it would be wrong to insist that all web sites must use an approved restricted vocabulary or a prescribed colour scheme.
6. David Parsons
I watched this report being made on BBC Breakfast News and they brought in a disabled campainer to make the point about websites
(he was in a wheel chair am I allowed to call him disabled?)
During the points he made I felt fair enough it should be possible to make some imrovements but the general impression was that it should be applicable to all websites including every Tom, Dick & Harry who has a site on the net.
I also got the impression that the campainer belived that web designers were conspiring against the blind, deaf, dumb (Or whatever they wish to be called)
I was left feeling that yes it would be an admirable & worthy cause but you just have to be more realistic even in these Politically Correct times.
Many able bodied people have trouble with websites and I can only imagine (thankfully)how difficult it must be for others who are not as able but while it's a big 'YES' try to improve things also get a grip of reality people please
7. Richard Sheppard
Self Help:
I believe in self-help so have adapted how my browser displays many web sites, including Silicon.com, to my particular needs by implementing "User Style Sheets."
Little is published about how to use this very useful, free facility built into MS Internet Explorer. For an explanation see:
http://www.curlewcommunications.co.uk/c-access.html
Skill Level:
Solutions for users must be simple (and cheap). It is unreasonable to expect all people with disabilities to have higher computer skills or aptitudes than the general population.
Better Navigation:
Finally, can anyone please suggest an HTML web site navigation mechanism which is fully accessible and does not occupy a large area of valuable screen space?
8. Steven Farkas
Just another example of people feeling that everyone has an obligation to help them. WRONG! Whether you consider the website to be an advertisement or an information source. Is every book, newspaper, magazine, billboard REQUIRED to to be in braille? Lets demand the closed captioning of radio broadcasts for the hearing impaired! Not possible, of course. The market will decide if it is important. Those websites that want those visitors will modify their sites to be available. Those that don't lose that business. Very simple before we all felt that someone owes us something...
9. Adrian Lee
To David Parsons:
Get a grip on reality? The reality is that many people (more so the people with visual impairments) have problems using the web. And why should they? Please don't anyone try saying the web is a 'visual medium' as I've seen elsewhere. As you say, yes its a good cause, but by what you are saying, its more realistic to discriminate against someone with any of these various problems.
If you got a problem with your sight tomorrow, would you suddenly stop using the web, because, lets be realistic, its not fair to expect web designers to spend a little effort in making them accessible to you is it.
To Jeffrey Risner, try not being a moron, there are other ways to use a computer than purely with a mouse. A person with a visual problem could have a high contrast colour scheme or a large mouse cursor to help them use it properly. A web designer creating a site with a high enough contrast between background colours and the text colour could be making it completely inaccessible to them.
To Brian: Entertainment sites quite often use sound. OK so a deaf person isn't going to get the full effect, but they can at least be offered some text explaining whats going on.
Theres really no excuse for being so short-sighted.
10. Michael Davies
Common misconceptions around web accessibility.
Jeffrey Risner: Surfing the web is not as complex or visually dependant as flying an aircraft. To relate the two is nothing short of idiocy on your part.
Richard Sheppard: you point out a list of people who should be responsible for accessible website, but overlook that the web designer also has the responsibility. Web designers have as much responsibility as website owners in making their websites compliant.
David Parsons: The web seems to be the last place realism lives. The web is designed as an accessible medium, yet many web sites plough tremendous amounts of capital into making their sites inaccessible. That's hardly the substance of realism.
Steven Farkas raises the classical false analogy of web accessibility. Billboards and typed books are going to be inaccessible to the blind - its the flaw in billboard and book design. However the web doesn't have this flaw - it is designed as an accessible medium. Different mediums different strengths. There's nothing preventing a well established.
The shocking low level of knowledge on web accessibility, the number of stubborn misconceptions and fallacies reiterated by people who should know better is a grave concern. Pitted against such ignorance as demonstrated in this thread is exactly why the DRC report and future legal action is vital and necessary.
11. Pariah S. Burke
Perhaps the DRC should follow its own advice. A quick accessibility check in Acrobat 6 Professional of the PDF version of the DRC report found that the report itself isn't accessible to people with disabilities. In the "Easy Read Summary" PDF of the report the document is not XML structured, has no specified language, and all 17 images are missing alternative text--so the vision impaired know they're missing some of the content, but have no idea what it is.
The full report, though it contains no images, is even worse. Again, no language is specified, 120 words are inaccessible because they contain no reliable Unicode mapping, and the document is unstructured.
The original report on Silicon.com characterizes the inability of the disabled and elderly, those whom it says have the most to gain from the internet, to use much of the internet's services as "the bitterest irony." While I certainly don't seek to demean either the lack of accessible content for the disabled and blind or Silicon.com's report, the bitterest irony is actually the fact that an agency tasked with enforcing the rights of the disabled and with producing "publications on rights and good practice for disabled people, employers and service providers" can't even create publications accessible by disabled people.
Before the Disability Rights Commission threatens suit against too many companies and designers, perhaps it should wipe the egg off its face. Glass houses are a real pain for the vision-impaired to navigate.
Reference:
- http://www.iampariah.com/blog/archives/000360.html
- http://magazinedesign.weblogsinc.com/
- http://nanopublishing.weblogsinc.com/entry/3239236368168881/
12. Craig Golby
Michael Davies is dead right, and is definately taking the ethical and moral approach.
But get real, Marketing have always and will always discriminate, in so much as they will target a specific market sector for their product, ignoring those that they think they have less chance of selling ino.
The web is just another channel to them. If it is felt by a company that a particular group of people are unlikely to purchase their product through that media, or for that matter to protect that group, then they dont want them to purchase their product through that media, then it should be the businesses choice to exclude them.
It is then on their heads if they have ecluded what could have been a very profitable marketplace that someone else then wins.
The blind airline pilot above is a little extreme, but does illustrate a good point. Several of the more modern airliners can in fact be programmed to take off, fly to their destination land, and taxi without any human intervention, so why not a blind pilot. Though I am sure the majority of passengers would walk off if they knew !!
It is not, to my knowledge, compulsory to release every book in a brail version, why not.
I think that we just need to be a little more realistic. If a companies site means that a certain group of people cannot realistically use it, whether they be disabled or from another group, then that is their choice.
If nothing else comes of it then there is a niche market there for someone to work on !!!
Wonder if able bodied people would complain about a site specifically designed for the disabled. I think not.
13. Michael Davies
In response to Craig Golby's comments:
The UK Disability Discrimination Act is quite clear - it is illegal to discriminate against a disabled person on the basis of their disability. Whether you purposely or ignorantly discriminate on that basis is irrelevent.
The reason for this Act is to protect the rights of disabled people from the very actions of companies and organisations you describe. They have as much right as you and I in participating in an online society.
Lets be realistic here, for general publically available products and services the target market is based on people's interest or tastes - not their disability. I don't believe UK websites have made formal decisions to make their websites inaccessible to disabled people - I believe it is more out of incompetance and lack of knowledge.
I'm disappointed to see Craig raising the same false analogy yet again with: "It is not, to my knowledge, compulsory to release every book in a brail version, why not."
The web is designed as an accessible medium. It is possible to create great looking websites that are also accessible, and to do so at a cost not that much more expensive than the current crop of sites that litter the Web. It is not difficult to create accessible websites either. The web doesn't have print runs, so there are no economies of scale cost-related issues.
The print media has problems the web doesn't. It relies on economies of scale to reduce costs, typically using high volume print runs. A typical book isn't accessible to a blind person, so a "blind-compatible" version is required for them to be able to read it. These problems don't exist on the Web. There is no reason, apart from incompetance and inconsideration, for a website not to be accessible.
14. Craig Golby
I completely take Michael Davies point, and if he read my notes that was not what I was suggesting.
To enforce a company to make their web site available for a person that is unlikely to ever view the site, or for that matter purchase their product, is ridiculous.
And whilst there would be no extended 'print run' as would be in the case of printed media, there is still additional costs in respect of analysis, specification, development, testing, implementation and ongoing maintenance of a site that would become substantially larger as a result of the requirements.
I am not saying dont do it, I am saying be realistic.